SEATTLE (Legal Newsline) - The statements of a police officer who committed suicide after testifying he wasn’t involved in a car chase aren’t inadmissible hearsay, a Washington appeals court ruled, reviving a lawsuit by a passenger in the vehicle who was crippled in an accident.
Channary Hor sued the driver of the car she was riding in as well as police officers and the City of Seattle, claiming the accident was caused by an improper police pursuit. Hor won a $17.4 million judgment against the driver in 2015 but the trial judge dismissed the city and police officers as defendants.
Two years later, one of the officers, Arron Grant, committed suicide. In a subsequent news article, the Tacoma News Tribune said colleagues quoted Grant as saying he felt guilty for testifying falsely about whether he’d engaged in a pursuit of the vehicle Hor was riding in.
Hor’s lawyers contacted the fellow officers and obtained sworn testimony that Grant had told them city attorneys had coerced him into testifying falsely about when he had turned on his emergency lights and whether any vehicles were chasing the fleeing vehicle when it crashed.
Hor asked for the judgment dismissing her case against the city to be reversed but the trial judge refused, saying the statements about what Grant supposedly said before he died were inadmissible hearsay. The Washington Division 1 Court of Appeals reversed, however, saying in an Aug. 23 decision the trial judge misinterpreted state rules of evidence.
Hor argued Grant’s alleged statements were allowed under Washington’s Rule 801, which provides an exception to the general bar on hearsay for admissions by a party to the litigation. While the police officers were indemnified by Seattle as to civil damages, they were still parties to the case, the appeals court noted.
The appeals court cited a 2006 decision, In re Estate of Miller, which allowed testimony about what a deceased man had said about money transfers the plaintiffs described as loans. As a party to the case, even though deceased, the man’s statements could be used under the exception to the hearsay rule.
Seattle argued successfully to the trial judge that the Miller court cited a 1999 text and the state had since adopted federal rules of evidence, which have tighter limits on hearsay. But the appeals court said the trial judge got it wrong; Miller was still good law and took precedent over “secondary sources” such as analysis of the federal rules of evidence.
Judgments are rarely overturned for any reason, but courts can do so when new evidence suggests the plaintiff was unfairly denied the opportunity to present his or her case, the appeals court said. Because the court rejected testimony about what Officer Grant had said before his suicide, the appeals court said, the case must be remanded for further consideration of whether justice was thwarted through “fraud, misrepresentation or other misconduct.”